


That Amnesiac Mana'Din Story

by Feynite



Series: Lavalas [2]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/F, Original Characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 13:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6986986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feynite/pseuds/Feynite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The latest attack on Mana’Din is… more complicated than most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt requesting a situation where Lavellan loses her memory, in my Dirthadad AU. So this would be an AU of an AU of an AU fanfic. Again.
> 
> Whoohoo!

The latest attack on Mana’Din is… more complicated than most.

It is probably the best effort so far. Elalas will grant it that, for whatever it may be worth. The old spirit vault site is unstable enough to begin with, but the remains uncovered in a cairn which Falon’Din had seemingly built is trap over _top_ of demand the leader’s attention. Most of the place is caved-in and long ago ransacked, but in the course of excavating everything, new spirit remains were uncovered. Most of the long dormant, but a few still had a spark of energy or two in them.

And then beneath _that_ , there had been a sleeping chamber, housing a half dozen still-living elves in uthenera. The odd spiritual energies of the place had been impeding their dreams for centuries, it had seemed, but Felenaste, Mana’Din’s most capable healer, had been convinced that they could all be recovered.

It had been tense going, carefully removing the spirit remains and the slumbering elders from the unstable earth. A lower-still chamber of the whole mess seemed to have emptied into some kind of abandoned dwarven hive. Mana’Din had ordered that sealed up as soon as it could be safely done.

“Dwarves sometimes hoard riches, it is said. Might be worth investigating,” Sulhamin, one of the more imaginative attendants, had suggested.

“Dwarves are more than capable of defending what bounty they take from the earth, Sulhamin, and plenty of right to do so. It is better to leave them be. Besides, these tunnels look long abandoned. With what was built over them, I would hardly be surprised if the dwarves themselves have sealed them off further along,” Mana’Din reasoned in return, in that frustrating way of hers that sounded _sensible_ and _moderate._

Elalas had spent years looking for signs that the woman said one thing and did another.

No such luck.

The discussion had been ongoing until Mana’Din broke it off to shepherd the spirit remains that had been gathered back into the Dreaming. She had clutched them carefully in her arms, calling up a spirit of Renewal that had taken to following her of late. The Dreaming had rippled around her, in an ordinary display of anticipation.

“Elalas, if you could-”

Whatever she had been about to say was cut off, abruptly, as the assassin attacked then.

A beam of light, a fractured arrow made with old enchantments, blessed with ancient words, had struck through the air. Mana’Din had noted it a half second before Elalas did, raising a hand, and Elalas found herself moving but she knew it would do no good. The lights had flared, a painful and disorienting display of magic. Shouts of alarm had gone up. The barrier Mana’Din tried to cast could not snap up quickly enough, and for one horrible moment, Elalas was certain she would be struck down.

And then Renewal moved.

In that split instant, everything had happened at once. The arrow struck the spirit. The barrier shattered. The shards of the slain spirits gleamed, as if with one unified scream. Mana’Din cried out and reached, with her free hand, for the injured spirit, even as it burst into its own broken remains. The energy released seemed to tangle with the magic from the arrow.

Elalas is not sure how it all worked. She had not been able to stare at it all, too lost to the ringing in her ears, the sparks in her eyes, the nauseating _rush_ of overwhelming noise and light and sound. She had shaken, horrified, clamping her hands over her ears as tremors shook through the air and through her skin, rattling her teeth and rolling in her stomach. A hive of angry wasps in her blood, until she had finally been able to look up.

Felenaste had been the first to move, to rush to Mana’Din. Then Sulhamin had barked, and he and three of the guards had taken off after the assailant.

“I need to know what weapon they used!” Felenaste had barked after them.

In the middle of the disaster, Mana’Din lay upon the ground. Clothes singed, mask scorched, blood pooling beneath her. The shards of Renewal lying amidst the dull remains of the long-dead spirits, gleaming with a soft, pale green light.

Elalas had felt ice cold.

What if she was dead?

Renewal was dead. That beautiful, beautiful spirit. Renewal was dead and if Mana’Din… if…

 _She is dead,_ the dark, bleak part of her mind had insisted, as Felenaste rolled her over, pulling aside some of the singed scraps of her clothes. She was not moving. She had been struck, despite Renewal’s sacrifice. _She would be so upset,_ Elalas cannot help but think. _A sacrifice for her, in the end. And not even worth anything._

Then Felenaste had started casting spells, and her sense had caught up with her. Healers did not cast spells for dead elves. Not this kind, anyway. She had stood – perhaps too quickly; she had vomited – but then she had made her way over, looking with better eyes at the trauma that he been inflicted. There was a wound on Mana’Din’s chest. Red blood soaking through white fabric. But apart from a few burns, the most worrying thing was her unconsciousness.

“Take off her mask for me,” Felenaste had instructed.

Elalas hesitated only a moment before doing as asked. She knew too well how badly it could go for injured people if something blocked their face. Blocked their air. She untied the bindings for it and lifted it away, and stared a moment at Mana’Din’s lax face. Eyes closed, breath barely passing from her lips.

“Good. Help me with her armour,” Felenaste asked, then, and she had tried not to look at all after that, untying ties and helping to carefully turn their injured leader. Holding her in place while the healer’s magic sealed her wound, and smoothed out her burn marks, and then assessed her. A broken shard of renewal had lodged itself just behind one of her ears, somehow, glimmering faintly as Felenaste removed it, and sealed the wound. The healer’s magic cracked a bit over her patient’s skin.

“This is not good,” she had concluded. “There is too much energy. But we cannot move her yet. She had one foot in the Dreaming, and if most of her is still there, moving her body will just make things worse. But I cannot tell for certain where she is with all this –“ she gestured, irritably, at the air and the spirit shards and the whole of the ambient energy, that was still buzzing over Elalas’ own senses.

Which is how it has come to this, Elalas supposes – her, plucking up Renewal’s remains. Trying not to look too closely at them as she ferries them to the Dreaming herself. Away from the damage zone, where Mana’Din still lies, breathing but unconscious. Still and all-too looking all too flesh-and-blood, with her mask set aside and blood staining the earth beneath her.

Bad earth, too. Parched and dry and dead from the centuries it has spent on the fringes of the vault, and its life-sucking barriers.

The wind catches the torn edges of Mana’Din’s clothes. It makes her look a bird that has been knocked out of the sky. Wings broken, feathers scattered. Elalas stares until her stomach turns again, and then she makes herself carry on with her task.

When Mana’Din sucks in a shocked gasp of air, though, Elalas feels like she hears it from all the way across the dead space. She is moving before she is thinking, dashing back over to the scorched disaster zone, her heart hammering in her chest as Felenaste says something in her neutral, calm tone of voice, and Mana’Din moves and…

Panic floods the air.

Panic, alarm, confusion. Unbridled and potent enough to give Elalas pause, to make her look sharply around for some sign of danger or trouble that the rest of them may have missed in the rush to secure their unconscious leader. Her skin prickles again and her temples throb, and she feels intensely aware of everything as she looks around. Of the vault’s massive, excavated crater. Of the twist of magic still heavy in the air. Of the distant outcroppings of rocks and trees, and every shadow on the ground, every curve in the terrain that might hide another would-be assassin.

And then a tide of gibberish floods out of Mana’Din’s mouth.

Felenaste blinks and Elalas stares, disquieted. The healer recovers first, catching their leader as she begins moving steadily away; inching backwards on the ground and still radiating that awful cocktail of fear and confusion.

Her senses must have been addled. Elalas has seen that happen to people before, although not quite… like this. But she has seen slaves lose their minds. Break and babble, turn incomprehensible, lose all hold on their emotions. Felenaste has seen it, too, but she seems more confused by it. Maybe she can pick up some nuance that Elalas is missing in that emotional mess.

The body language is clear enough, though. Abundantly.

Whatever has happened to her, Mana’Din has woken up _terrified._

“It is alright,” Elalas says, holding out her hands as she moves carefully forward. “The assassin has run off. Sulhamin and the others went after them. You are safe, my lady. Whoever it was will not get a chance to attack again.”

Mana’Din turns to look at her, though, and Elalas comes up short. Caught entirely wrong-footed by this woman again; but this time seems an exceptional case. Mana’Din’s eyes are wide, and her brows are furrowed, and there is just something… she cannot place what it is, precisely, but she can _tell_. Felenaste’s alarm makes much more sense, now.

There is something _missing._

“You… you speak elf?” Mana’Din asks, in a cracked and uncertain voice, with stilted words that are as baffling as anything. “Keeper where? My clan?”

_Clan?_

And what Keeper? There is no Keeper. Not here, certainly, and not anywhere that anyone should know about, either. Elalas looks at Felenaste, who looks back at her, as if _she_ is not the only person who might be able to explain this particular twist of fate.

“How hard did you hit your head, tyrant?” she blurts at Mana’Din, trying to quash down her growing panic as their illustrious leader looks around like she’s trying to find an escape route. Or like she does not even recognize where she _is._

“I… apologies… I not know words. Speak _common?”_ she asks.

“What is common?” Elalas demands.

Felenaste opens her mouth, and then closes it, and shakes her head. But once again, she seems to be the first to rally her better senses, out of the three of them. After a moment she sucks in a breath, and then reaches over and places a hand on Mana’Din’s shoulder.

“My lady. You were hurt,” she says, slowly and carefully. “Injured? Let me cast more spells, please.”

Mana’Din stares at her, not quite flinching away but clearly uncertain. She looks the healer up and down, and then glances back at Elalas; and then at their surroundings, again, before she sucks in a fortifying breath.

“You… magic?” she asks. “What clan?”

_Why does she keep asking about clans?_

Elalas wonders, shifting uncomfortably. But Felenaste seems to have given up on wondering, as she only nods and asks Mana’Din to hold still, and then sets about trying to figure out what, precisely, of all the possible things that could have gone awry in the fucking mess, actually _did._

But at the first wash of magic, Mana’Din gasps and stiffens and goes rigid with shock again. And it floods the air, _again,_ unbridled and potent enough that it is hard to witness.

“It is alright. It is just a few spells,” Felenaste says, in low, soothing tones.

“I… I not… you _very_ magic,” Mana’Din replies, inching back a bit. Then she looks down at herself, and seems shocked, again, by her own clothes.

That reaction somehow manages to be even more disconcerting. The woman suddenly losing her capacity for linguistics, forgetting where she is, and becoming uneasy with simple diagnostic spells is strange enough. But Mana’Din’s wardrobe varies so little, on average, that Elalas can scarcely comprehend how out-of-sorts she must be to be _surprised_ by it. ‘Flowy, white, with armour bits and a mask’ is basically all Mana’Din has worn for as long as she has known her.

More gibberish words escape her, as she lifts a few pieces of singed fabric. Elalas wishes she could attribute the shock to the _damage_ to the clothes, but really, that is nearly as common.

Sulhamin and the guard return then, and Elalas finds herself moving to intercept them before they reach Mana’Din without even really thinking about it. Sulhamin is… decent enough, as former servants of Falon’Din go. The man was once the resource manager for a remote outpost. He has a habit towards ruthlessness and opportunism that sometimes grates at her, but he is not an idiot or a sadist, and he does not flaunt his station.

The guards she does not know much at all; though she knows _of_ Mana’Din’s guards well enough to know she does not actually trust most of them with their lady’s safety.

But they are, at least, dragging the unconscious form of at least one – and hopefully the only – attacker.

The elf is slight. Pale, and marked with Mana’Din’s vallaslin; but on the further contours of their face, they have added in the marks that would align with Falon’Din’s symbols instead. Cut with some sharp blade, and left to scar, either by will, or by a lack of applied healing magic.

Elalas feels a surge of pity for them, in amidst her disgust. A lurch, that comes now whenever she thinks of leaders and devotion, and how insidiously masters can thread their fingers through the minds of those at their mercy.

That will not be her.

Ever.

“Mana’Din was injured. We will need to get her somewhere safe and secure,” she says, and when Sulhamin looks over towards her, she inexplicably wants to move to physically to block his view. She glances back, instead, rigidly staying where she is, and sees the leader is still sitting with Felenaste, looking conspicuously vulnerable and unlike herself. Her mask is still off.

“What kind of injury?” Sulhamin asks, moving to stride over.

Elalas catches his arm.

“She is addled,” she says. “It would not do to crowd her. Felenaste is trying to discover the extent of the damage, but we cannot stay here. It is too conspicuous.”

There are workers in the area, and spies, and possibly affiliates of their would-be assassin. She alone can name at least a half dozen splintered groups that would be jumping up to try and seize the opportunity of a confused and out-of-sorts Mana’Din, and it feels like all of them must be watching from between the trees right this very moment.

 _Mana’Din is not the problem,_ she had found herself saying, at the last meeting she had attended. Months ago. Off in the unmarked village, where it was Mana’Din’s own forces – Mana’Din’s own laws – that gave them a safe haven from scrutiny, that kept the more malevolent among her followers from using its residents as target practice and punching bags.

 _The dictator who brands her property with bastardized clan markings is not a problem?_ Bellan had scoffed. _And they call me blind._

_Let me rephrase. The problem of removing Mana’Din from power is not a priority. Right now, it is not a choice between her and the hold-outs off the coast. Do you see our ‘friends’ across the water launching any ships, sending any armies to come and help us reclaim territory? No. They do not want to fight a war they cannot win, and neither do I. I would vastly prefer not to fight any wars at all. If we are going to change things, Bellan, we are going to have to find some people in power we can stomach._

_And you can stomach Mana’Din?_ Bellan had asked, skeptical and derisive and Elalas knows why. She knows, full well, why. She knows how many of her former allies and acquaintances and even friends turned from her, in the aftermath of her taking on a position at Mana’Din’s side, and then not immediately using it to try and kill the woman. How many of her contacts dried up. Vanished. Left without a word.

 _The only reason we are here to plot against her family is because she lets us be here, to plot against her family,_ Elalas had said. _So yes. I can stomach her._

_Gratitude for the kindly overseer?_

_How many of us are still alive because of pity? Hate it all you want, Bellan. I hate it, too. But do not pretend we do not still need it, sometimes._

And even so saying, she _does_ hate it.

Maybe it is only fitting, then, to offer it to Mana’Din, in turn. Even though she knows, on some level, that the woman does not pity her. Even though she knows, too, that it would be laughable for her to claim that as her chief sentiment towards the woman.

“You expect me to take _your_ word on this?” Sulhamin asks. “Mana’Din might trust you when she is capable enough, Elalas, and I do not take you for a fool. But I am not about to name you chief authority on our leader’s well-being in times of crisis, either.”

She bristles.

But there is not much she can do, as the man moves over towards the site of the attack, and the healer and leader still trying to work things out in the midst of it. Not much besides follow him, closely, her hackles raised, tense as if someone has just collapsed in the middle of a work camp, and caught the attention of an overseer who could run either cruel or kind, depending on the way the wind was blowing.

“My lady?” Sulhamin asks, stopping at a respectful distance.

Mana’Din blinks up at him.

“What is word? ‘Lady’?” she asks.

There is a moment of stunned silence.

Mana’Din glances towards Elalas, when it becomes apparent that Sulhamin is not going to answer her question quickly. Then she looks at Felenaste, who is also looking at Elalas, at first.

“What is word? Please?” Mana’Din asks.

“…It is Lady. It is, ah, a woman who is in command?” Felenaste ventures.

This seems to stymie their leader, who blinks at her, and then treats Sulhamin to a baffled look, and just in general seems very much as if she is trying to figure out what is going on, and is coming up painfully blank. The confusion is potent, and apprehension, too, growing by the moment.

Sulhamin finally recovers enough to shoot Felenaste a sharp look.

“What is wrong with her?” he demands.

“I am still trying to figure that out!” Felenaste snaps back. “A spirit of Renewal exploded _into_ her, that does not commonly happen to people! Not to mention all those shards she was carrying, and whatever her attacker was using. Did you get the weapon they had?”

“No weapon. It must have been a spell,” Sulhamin says.

“More pressingly, can we move her?” Elalas asks, cutting in and shifting on her feet. “We are out in the open here.”

Felenaste nods.

“Her consciousness is present and accounted for, if addled,” she confirms.

Mana’Din frowns, as if trying to parse out the words again. If she had to relearn how to speak, Elalas thinks, that is going to be… complicated. Though at least it does not seem as if she is starting from _scratch._

“Fine. Then we will move her,” Sulhamin concedes.

That heralds an argument between the three of them on where _to_ move her. Felenaste wants her back at the summer palace, where her best medical supplies and apprentices are. But supplies can be moved; often, even, apprentices can carry them from one place to another. And the summer palace is a crowded mess of followers and visitors and the peacekeepers Elgar’nan sent last month to ‘evaluate’ things, corralled there when Mana’Din could not entirely remove them from the territory. Sulhamin wants to get her to the nearest outpost, instead; he seems to be operating under the optimistic hope that if they get her a quiet room and some time to ‘collect herself’, she will abruptly return to normal.

Elalas has her own idea.

“There is a fishing village, not far from here through the crossroads. Quiet, secluded, and no one can approach it without announcing themselves. One of the more well-guarded places in the territory, in fact. We should take her there.”

Sulhamin and Felenaste both look at her like she has lost her mind.

“Do not play coy. That is the Unmarked Village,” Sulhamin says, furious.

“And she is an unmarked elf!” Elalas retorts, gesturing towards Mana’Din. “Hardly anyone in the territory would recognize her by her face. Anywhere else, and they will know her immediately as either Mana’Din, vulnerable, or a _slave_ out-of-bounds. Do you care for their possible reactions? Because I do not.”

“I care even less for the prospect of delivering her into the hands of anti-Imperial rebels and assassins!” Sulhamin argues.

“When has there ever been a single unmarked assassin to attack her? _When?_ ” she demands, in return.

“I…”

They pause in their argument, looking over to Mana’Din; who is at last managing to rise to her feet.

“I… thank you. I go… go search my clan, now,” the leader says, unsteadily.

Felenaste rises up and manages to convince her that ‘barely able to stand’ is not a good place to be embarking upon any random and bizarre quests for long-gone societies from. Elalas turns back towards Sulhamin, and lowers her voice.

“She keeps mentioning clans. Keepers. Asking about things long gone. It will conspicuous anywhere _but_ that village,” she says.

Sulhamin wavers, a bit.

He shares a look with Felenaste, who glances at Mana’Din.

“Medical supplies are sent there often enough. I could get what I need, fairly easily,” she concedes. “And it _is_ quiet.”

After a breath, the man relents.

“I know you are not stupid enough to get her killed,” he says, to Elalas. “I just hope you are not clever of enough to have figured out some scheme which I cannot perceive.”

“I am,” Elalas tells him. “But that is not what is happening now.”

“Please. My clan?” Mana’Din asks again.

“We do not know where your clan is,” Felenaste says, at last. “But there is a village. It is safe. You come with us now, and we will try to find this clan for you. Alright? Or anyone from it.”

Their leader hesitates, clearly unconvinced of their sincerity. Her expression shifts, painfully open and yet, at once, somehow difficult to read. The air around her is suffused with her conflicting emotions, and they seem to be distracting her. Not even simply in terms of the emotions themselves; but the sight of them, the perception of them, is…

It is like…

Like Elalas herself, in fact.

But the situation must be clear, even to her disoriented mind. She looks at Elalas for a long moment, and then nods.

“Yes to village, then,” she agrees, following it with some odd strain of gibberish.

“I will go tell the guards to stay behind,” Sulhamin decides. “They will only make things harder, where we are headed. They can take their prisoner to the outpost, at least. Try not to let her lose any more of her mind before I walk back.”

Felenaste makes a rude gesture at his retreating form.

Mana’Din snickers at her. A nervous, tiny little sound, that seems young and strange and surreal. Not least because of how it makes her lift a hand to her mouth, lips twitching and eyes crinkling, until she winces at some lingering ache that the healing spells have yet to clear.

Elalas frowns, as something in her chest twists inconveniently.

Oh, there is _so much_ wrong with this.

And why does she have the nagging feeling that getting Mana’Din through the crossroads is going to be… interesting?


	2. Part Two

She keeps on waiting to wake up.

That seems like the only thing for it, really. One moment she’d been lying in her tent, mentally going over what she’d need to get ready for her trip south in a few days. The next, she’d been in the middle of unfamiliar terrain, surrounded by equally unfamiliar elves; dressed in strange clothes, her ears ringing and her skin burning, with no idea at all of what had happened. How she’d got there, or whether she was surrounded by friends or foes.

She’s… still not sure, to be honest.

These elves are strange, but _everything_ is strange. _She_ feels strange. Their surroundings look… are they in Seheron, maybe? Orlais? The Anderfels?

She doesn’t know. She’s been all over the Free Marches, but she’s never seen anywhere quite like this. There’s a deep pit, and scarred terrain. What looks like it could possibly be a mine, of some kind, or maybe just an entrance to the Deep Roads? She can’t really tell, the structures don’t look terribly familiar either way. There are elves around, but it’s eerie. All of them seem to have the same vallaslin, some modified design of the markings for Falon’Din, which isn’t too strange except that they _all_ have it.

Down to a one.

And they all speak elven.

Very, very _complicated_ elven.

Exclusively.

She’s trying not to think ‘time travel’. She’s trying not to think it, even as the elves… she’s _tentatively_ considering them friendly, since they healed her and they’re wearing vallaslin and none of them seem to be plotting anything too dire, as far as she can tell… even as they herd her into a small aravel, pulled by… definitely not halla. Or even horses, or oxen, or anything she might expect. The air is strange, stormy with magic and other impressions she has trouble defining, and it’s giving her a headache. Or maybe that’s just her lingering injuries, which still ache; regardless of what might have caused them.

She’s trying not to think that maybe time travel carries some risk of injury or something, because it’s impossible, she has no idea how she would have managed it from the safe confines of her bedroll at night, and even if there are a lot of odd things and no signs of familiar landmarks or humans about, and strange elves speaking a ton of elven, that… time travel is probably a ludicrous assumption to jump to, right?

It has to be.

She’s not even a _mage._

But then the little procession of theirs carries down a long, oddly paved road, until it comes to a large mirror sitting on a pedestal. And she knows some things, about mirrors and her ancestors. There was talk about Clan Sabrae, and blighted relics, and the keeper had brought in all the scouts and hunters and warriors, and anyone else liable to wander the wilds, and elicited promises from all of them that if they found any hidden mirrors or relics like them, they would not touch them, and would come back and tell her of it immediately.

She must be dreaming. Must absolutely be dreaming, she thinks, as they head through the mirror and into a completely different place. A world of winding pathways and islanded gardens, opulent statuary and… and it makes her dizzy, just trying to look at it all. Just trying to process it all. She thinks she _should_ look, that even if this is a dream maybe it’s the important kind. Maybe she should look and see it all so that when she wakes up, she can tell the keeper. But her skin feels _wrong_ and there’s… there’s too much, flooding out of her and over her. Roaring across her senses.

She wants to hide, instead.

Shameful.

A hand closes over her forearm.

It is a long, elegant hand, calloused and firm, and the touch is steadying. She looks over towards the elf it belongs to. The woman who dresses more like a Dalish elf than the others do; if an amazingly prosperous one. But the woman isn’t looking back at her. Instead her gaze is firmly fixed upon the path. She follows the line of it, and finds that makes things easier. The paving is strange and shimmering, like the inside of a seashell, but it’s better than all the rest of it. She watches it go past, and counts the lines between bricks.

The grip on her tightens, briefly, and then lets go.

The woman says something, but not to her. She doesn’t catch all the words, and the accent is strange, but she parses the gist of it as ‘hurry up’. And the wagon does speed up a little bit, trundling more assuredly as the roadway changes from shimmering bricks to smooth, interlocking patterns, that weave like braids. They pass through _another_ mirror, that leads to yet-more strange pathways, before finally exiting a third, and exchanging the forest of roads for regular dirt and dust and a tiny, wooden platform.

She lets out a breath of relief.

But the strangeness abates only in that regard.

The atmosphere is still odd, and she’s out-of-sorts enough that she doesn’t protest when the healer prompts her further into the aravel, and closes the flaps around her. The rocking of their passage makes her feel woozy, and the pounding between her temples isn’t letting up. She has to concentrate to keep from retching, and so she’s not quite sure when the steady plod of hoofbeats over wood changes to the heavier rasp of them falling onto stone instead.

She notices when the aravel stops, though. There are voices, and she feels a rush of unease. If they have gone into a town, her instincts insist that this is dangerous. She checks her belt and finds the solid weight of a blade there. A sword, but no shield. A quick check reveals that the weapon comes smoothly out of its sheath. She only lifts it a little, though. Enough to see gleaming metal, of a sort she doesn’t recognize, and then she drops it again as one of the side flaps on the aravel opens.

It’s the healer, again.

 _“Come,”_ the woman says, in elven. And then some other things, but she only catches the word ‘safe’ among them.

She tries to keep her wits about her anyway, as she climbs out. But then her knees buckle onto smooth stone paving, and the air is awash with – with magic? Magic that feels like emotions. Spirits, maybe. She doesn’t know. It’s painfully confusing, and her headache crests into the worst sort as she is hurried inside a small building. There’s more talking, and a hand against her temple, but the pulse of magic it from it just makes her flinch. Makes everything worse.

“Stop,” she asks, blinking past spots in her vision. It’s too bright. She doesn’t think it’s really the _light_ that’s the problem, but it’s the only way she can describe it.

It’s too bright.

She nearly collapses, until a pair of arms catch her, and then heft her up. Carrying her like she hasn’t been carried since she was sixteen and broke her leg when she got complacent around one of the more territorial halla, and it kicked her. She turns her face in towards whoever’s carrying her, squeezing her eyes shut and hoping it’ll be over when she opens them.

A dream.

But there are only rapid footsteps, and then the sensation of moving downwards, hastily heading into some place that is…

That is blessedly dark, and cool, and quiet.

It’s like having a damp cloth pressed against over-heated skin. She lets out a breath, but keeps her eyes closed. Still trying to focus on not throwing up, as her rescuer carries her further, and then eventually places her onto something soft and flat. A bedroll? But, it seems higher than it should be. Maybe something fancier, somehow? A _bed?_

It’s very soft.

Almost too soft. She feels like she might fall through it. She sucks in a breath through her nose, and lets it out through her mouth. And then takes a chance on carefully opening her eyes. But she was maybe right, she thinks, when she guessed that it wasn’t really the _light_ that was bothering her. There’s still quite a bit of that, but it’s soft now. Ambient. Filtering down from some tiny, square windows, that are set high into a nearby wall.

A hand retracts quickly away from where it had been hovering near her forehead.

She looks up at the Dalish-like woman, who is staring down at her in return. Her brow is furrowed.

 _“It very bad for you,”_ the woman says. Or, approximately, anyway.

“What happened?” she wonders. And then she remembers that no one speaks common, and amends herself. _“Happened, what? Please.”_

The woman purses her lips.

 _“Accident,”_ her rescuer says, succinctly but clearly. Then seems to consider something for a moment. _“Mana’Din?”_

She frowns at the unfamiliar term. Past Death? Death’s Past? Death is in the Past?

The woman looks at her for a moment, and then presses her hand to her chest.

_“I am called Elalas.”_

Names.

Right.

She considers giving her own, but, maybe the clan name would be wiser? Or more risky? It’s… not an uncommon name, though. She’s heard tell that there are some city elves who carry it, too. Not that she supposes she could mistaken for one of those, at least, not to anyone who knows much about elves. Like these people obviously would.

Still.

“ _I am called Lavellan_ ,” she offers.

Elalas looks disquieted, at that.

 _“Stay here,”_ she asks, and to be honest, Lavellan’s not really sure she could hatch any kind of daring escape plan right now, even if she was certain she wanted to. This room – which seems simple enough, even if it is impressively furnished – is the first place she’s been since all of this began that hasn’t felt like some kind of torture.

She closes her eyes, and listens to the sound of retreating footsteps. Focuses on her breaths, and her dissipating nausea, and the persistent pain between her temples until that begins to ease. And when it does, it’s such a relief that she can’t seem to help but lapse away from consciousness; drifting to sleep from one breath to the next.

~

She dreams about ravens.

It’s a very strange dream. She feels odd, in it. Displaced. Disoriented. But of course, it’s a dream; sometimes that’s just how it goes, with those. There are black raven wings, large and fluttering. She sees the owner of one set land in a tree in front of her, as another bird seems to circle overhead.

It makes her think, dimly, of the keeper’s stories. Of Fear and Deceit, the companions of the God of Secrets.

She’s not wholly surprised, then, when she turns and sees him there. A masked and cloaked figure, dark and distant. Standing on the edges of some strange horizon. She blinks, and he’s gone; but then she feels a hand settle onto her shoulder, and she nearly jumps right out of her skin. She whips around and finds herself staring into the dark eyes of a mask. Deep and fathomless, and somehow in her bones she knows they’re Dirthamen’s eyes.

Because she’s… she’s fallen somewhere. Out of time, or maybe through the Veil, through the Fade. To somewhere where everything is much too much for her. A mortal carried by some stray celestial current into the lands of the eternal.

Maybe she died in her sleep?

Maybe this is just… some test?

She’s never put too much faith in the gods – even if they were real, she thinks, they’re still _gone_ – but there are parts of her mind that simply flare in panic, and as they do, she finds herself dropping to her knees. Lowering her gaze. Looking away from that stare, that seems intent on scouring through her very soul.

In the dream, the soil beneath her hands feels coarse.

“Forgive me, my lord,” she manages. And then she thinks, _no, say it elven, you idiot!_ and repeats the phrase, as properly as she can.

There’s a pause.

Then a shifting, slight, and she’s not sure what to make of it as the God of Secrets kneels down in front of her. Joining her in the dirt, as she studiously avoids looking into his eyes again.

“It is alright, my child,” he says, in common. And she cannot help letting out a breath of relief, at that. Of course a god might speak any language he cared to.

She dares another glance up at his mask.

“You… you are Dirthamen, are you not?” she checks. Because the ravens are fairly telling, but then again, her people have lost a great deal of their history. She could be wrong.

“Yes,” the god says. Then he tilts his head, slightly. “Why are you kneeling?”

She hesitates.

“…It seemed like the thing to do?” she suggests. “I have not met very many gods.”

Dirthamen stares at her for another moment.

“Your memory does not go far at all. How old are you?” he asks, and that seems to her like the kind of thing he should just _know_. But then again, maybe not? It’s probably a bad idea to make a lot of suppositions about what’s going on. For all she knows, she ate something off at dinner, and this own thing is just a fever-induced hallucination she’s having while Deshanna pours tonics down her throat.

“I am twenty-six, my lord,” she offers.

He reaches out, then, and in an oddly paternal gesture, closes his hand across her cheek. She blinks at him.

“Do you like being twenty-six?” he asks.

She’s… not sure how to answer that. She opens her mouth, but ultimately just sort of shrugs.

“I think I would like it a bit more if I could get back to my life,” she decides. “Please, my lord Dirthamen. I do not know what is going on. What has happened to me? Will you tell me?”

Dirthamen is quiet, for a moment. He brushes her cheek, gently, and then withdraws his touch. When he moves to stand, though, he takes her hands, and brings her up with them. The ravens are still where they were before; one in a tree, the other circling overhead. But she has the weirdest impression that they’ve changed posts, somehow; even though she doesn’t know how she’d even tell them apart.

It’s a dream, though. Dreams don’t really have to make a lot of sense.

“You have forgotten,” Dirthamen tells her.

She feels a pang. There is a lot, she knows, that her people have lost.

“We… we tried not to,” she offers. “We really did.”

What if he’s angry about it, though? He’s the God of Knowledge as much as secrets, after all. What if he feels like the Dalish have failed him? But what more can they do? They preserve what they can, however they can. And it’s unfair, she decides. It’s unfair, if he’s angry at them, because it’s not as if he’s been around to guide them. To tell them what they’ve forgotten.

But when he speaks, Dirthamen doesn’t sound angry. Only curious.

“Would you like to remember?” he asks.

 _Yes,_ she thinks, at once. But then she pauses. Reconsiders.

“What would be the cost of remembering?” she wonders.

“Pain,” Dirthamen tells her, immediately. “What has been lost cannot be regained. Only recalled. Forgetting might free you somewhat from the burden of grief. But it would also be a denial of your responsibilities. Those would be taken from you.”

He is solemn and forthright, and she wonders if all the gods are like this. So direct, and strange, and unexpectedly gentle. She considers his offer. She’s no keeper, or First, tasked with preserving history and stories and knowledge. But she’s still Dalish. And she could never turn from her responsibilities, she thinks. Not to her people, and not to their history.

“I want to remember, then,” she decides.

Dirthamen nods.

“Then I shall gather your memories for you,” he says. “Fear will stay with you, to make certain you are safe, until that is done. Trust no one.”

“What?” she asks, trying to put that all together.

But then he just reaches over, and brushes a hand across her forehead. And suddenly the dream feels blurry, and indistinct. Her concerns fly from her thoughts, and she drifts down and away; into soft currents that carry her through gentle, flower-strewn gardens, and quiet forests, as clouds pass gently above her head.

When she wakes up, for a moment she only feels languid and peaceful. Comfortable. There’s no more pounding in her temples, no more aches from her wounds. She rests a moment, staring uncomprehendingly up at an unfamiliar ceiling.

 _This is nice,_ she thinks.

And then all at once she remembers her dream, and what came before it, and she sits bolt upright.

Her head swims and the room tilts in protest. Something swoops down from the rafters, black and large, and she hurries away from it. Her legs tangle in the bedsheets and she ends up crashing to the floor, letting out a startled yelp, as black feathers fill up the periphery of her vision. Her weapons are gone, and she’s in a soft white nightshirt – oh, shit, her clothes have changed _again_ – and when she scrambles for the door, she finds it locked.

The massive raven in the room with her caws.

Her gaze flits to its wickedly sharp-looking beak, and talons, and in her defense she’s not entirely awake before she decides that the only defensible position left to her is to climb under the bed.

Which she does.

It’s too narrow a gap for the massive bird to follow her, at least, so she presses back towards the wall, where that beak and those talons can’t get at her. She watches as they land on the floor, huge and deadly sharp, and the black bird peers down at her with distressingly intelligent eyes.

“You are afraid of me,” it says, in a voice like whispers drifting up from the inside of her skull.

Well that’s… terrifying.

She presses close to the wall, and tries to figure out what the hell she’s going to do. Maybe hiding was a bad idea, but right now, she can’t bring herself to regret it. Not when some possible-godly-companion-demon-bird is whispering things into her skull.

There is a swishing sound, as the door to the room opens.

A brusque voice curses. Sharply. But she recognizes it as belonging to one of the elves who had helped her yesterday, she thinks. Elalas. And then she feels a pang of worry, as the demon bird turns away from the bed. Do these elves know about it? She’s about to call out, when a pair of bare feet stride up alongside the raven.

They keep a fair distance from it. But though the bird manages to radiate a certain surprisingly clear amount of disdain in the general direction of their owner, it doesn’t lunge to attack her, either.

Lavellan feels a brief moment of embarrassment as Elalas bends down to peer at her.

They regard each other silently for several long seconds.

Then then other woman straightens back up, and starts talking in rapid elven to – as near as she can tell – the raven.

 _“Get you away,”_ she makes out.

The raven caws stubbornly.

_“You make it worse, only. Why she hide from you? You are not good to her! Vile thing.”_

She hears wings flapping, and figure she should probably do something. What, she’s not sure; but she climbs out from under the bed, as the raven snaps its beak at Elalas.

 _“You only make her be dead. Traitor! Traitor thoughts In traitor head. Dangerous thing, you are. Make be dead what is precious child. Not in any position to order Fear. No,”_ she thinks it says. But it doesn’t exactly make a lot of sense, and she suspects she’s missing quite a bit, as the words seem to slip towards Elalas and are barely audible to her anyway.

 _“Get you gone! Now! Before start I plucking feathers!”_ Elalas insists, pointing at the wall; as if she expects the bird to fly right through it.

Which it… possibly can?

 _“Shall see you I try?”_ the raven wonders.

“Okay!” she breaks in, lifting her hands.

Both the demon bird and the beautiful elf turn to regard her.

She hesitates, a moment.

 _“I… I am where?”_ she finally asks, hoping the question will at least distract the… the argument, that’s broken out over her.

The raven rustles its feathers.

She takes a tentative step further back from it, as Elalas frowns.

 _“You in village,”_ she is informed. _“Tell Fear go away. It will go, if say you ‘go’.”_

Elalas gestures towards the raven, which clacks its beak at her again. She blinks, and swallows. Staring at Fear, the servant of the Dirthamen, and highly doubting she has anything approaching authority over it. Her gaze flits back towards Elalas, who is still frowning at her.

 _“…Go?”_ she tries, tentatively.

 _“Not I,”_ says Fear.

Elalas throws her hands up in the air, and then curses.

The irritation in the gesture is so plain, and so ordinary, that it actually startles a laugh out of her. She feels a strange kind of relief, even despite everything going on. It’s just… that’s the sort of gesture any elf would make, when frustrated by some implacable clanmate, or a stubborn halla, or willful little child. Simple and familiar, and she’s surprised at how overwhelmingly glad she is to see it.

To see that this is just another person, somehow. Not a god in disguise, or something.

A sound somewhat like a broken laugh escapes her, before she covers her mouth to catch it.

Elalas blinks.

“ _Sorry,”_ she offers.

The other woman stares at her for a moment, and then shakes her head.

 _“No be. No matter. Come with me; we leave Bird Who is Dumb Beyond Measure to do what it please,”_ Elalas says. And after what seems like a moment of internal hesitation, she reaches out, and extends a hand towards her. _“Lavellan?”_

Lavellan smiles, and nods in acknowledgement.

She carefully sidesteps Fear, making an attempt at a respectful nod, before taking Elalas’ hand.

It’s about as comforting as she remembered it being last time.

“Elalas,” she says, hoping she’s recalled the name correctly.

The fingers around her own tighten. Elalas looks at her strangely. Eyes flitting across her face, and her stance, and then dropping down to their joined hands. She opens her mouth as if she’s about to ask something, but then catches herself instead.

 _“Come,_ ” she simply repeats.

Turning, she opens up the door behind her. The simple-yet-not room they’re in leads out into a hall which matches it. The smooth floor tiles make her think of the abodes of wealthy human lords. But there are no tapestries on the walls, and though everything is meticulous, it’s also rather dull and simplistic looking. As if by intent.

She keeps hold of Elalas, and braces herself as they make their way up a narrow flight of stairs.


End file.
